Quick, somebody tell CIA Director John Brennan about the handwriting on the inside wall of the boat in which Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding before Boston-area police riddled it and him with bullets. Tell Brennan that Tsarnaev’s note is in plain English and that it needs neither translation nor interpretation in solving the mystery: “why do they hate us?”

And, if Brennan will listen, remind him of when his high school teachers, the Irish Christian Brothers, taught him the meaning of “handwriting on the wall” in the Book of Daniel and why it became an idiom for predetermined, imminent doom.

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

CBS senior correspondent John Miller, who before joining CBS served in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, broke the handwritten-note story Thursday on CBS This Morning. He described what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev scribbled on the side of the boat as he lay bleeding “from multiple gunshot wounds” in the boat. Here, according to Miller’s sources, is what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s note said:

“The [Boston] bombings were in retribution for the U.S. crimes in places like Iraq and Afghanistan [and] that the victims of the Boston bombing were collateral damage, in the same way innocent victims have been collateral damage in U.S. wars around the world. Summing up, that when you attack one Muslim you attack all Muslims.”

My experience with now-CBS-This-Morning’s Charlie Rose is that he does listen closely. Thus, I believe it is to his credit that he seemed determined, with his follow-up question, to drive home what I think is by far the most important point:

Co-anchor Norah O’Donnell: “But they still believe he was self-radicalized and not part of a larger group, right?”

Miller: “That’s right. …”

Note to CIA Director Brennan

If you didn’t understand much about such motives three years ago, after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to down an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, here’s a chance to learn. I actually felt embarrassed for you when you – then-White House counter-terrorism adviser – were asked on Jan. 7, 2010, two weeks after the almost-catastrophe over Detroit, to explain why people want to kill Americans. I’m sure you remember; it turned out to be Helen Thomas’s swan song.

It took the questioning of the then-89-year old veteran correspondent Thomas to show how little you were willing to share (or how little you knew) about what leads terrorists to do what they do. As her catatonic White House press colleagues took their customary dictation, Thomas posed an adult query that spotlighted the futility of government plans to counter terrorism with more high-tech gizmos and intrusions on the liberties and privacy of the traveling public.

She asked why Abdulmutallab did what he did: “And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why.” It was a highly revealing dialogue; this is how it went. Remember?

You: “Al-Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents. … They attract individuals like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that he’s (sic) able to attract these individuals. But al-Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death.”

Thomas: “And you’re saying it’s because of religion?”

You: “I’m saying it’s because of an al-Qaeda organization that used the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way.”

Thomas: “Why?”

You: “I think this is a — long issue, but al-Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland.”

Thomas: “But you haven’t explained why.”

Actually, there is a ton of information explaining why people try, for example, to explode bombs in Times Square, in airliners over Detroit, in remote CIA outposts in Afghanistan just to kill Americans, even when it means killing themselves. [See, for example, Consortiumnews.com’s “Answering Helen Thomas on Why.”]

It was painful to watch you suggest on Jan. 7, 2010, that, apparently in some mysterious way, some folks are hard-wired at birth for the “wanton slaughter of innocents,” and your contention that – in the case of Abdulmutallab – al-Qaeda/Persian Gulf was able to jump-start that privileged 23-year old Nigerian, inculcate in him the acquired characteristics of a terrorist, and persuade him to do the bidding of al-Qaeda/Persian Gulf.

Your words were a real stretch as to how the well-heeled Abdulmutallab, without apparent prior terrorist affiliations, was suddenly transformed into an international terrorist ready to die while killing innocents.

Perhaps no one told you that the young Nigerian had particular trouble with Israel’s wanton slaughter of more than a thousand civilians in Gaza the year before, a brutal campaign defended by Washington as justifiable self-defense. You ought to take the time to learn about these things.

Till next time, Ray.

How to Spin This One

An important element in intelligence analysis is to understand the why, what’s the motive. That doesn’t mean you sympathize with what someone did. It does mean that you understand that knowing why is an important starting point for future prevention of similar acts.

Yet, virtually no one in the U.S. political/media hierarchy has dared to discuss, in a candid way, the issue of motivation. All the American people normally get is boilerplate about how al-Qaeda evildoers are perverting a religion and exploiting impressionable young men.

There is almost no discussion about why so many people in the Muslim world object to U.S. policies so strongly that they are inclined to resist violently and even resort to suicide attacks. So how will the media spin Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s handwritten note?

Well, we’ve already watched CBS’s Norah O’Donnell come up with the familiar “self-radicalization” shibboleth. She tied the concept to a lack of ties with a larger group, but “self-radicalization” is normally employed to create the impression that hard-wired “violent Muslim extremists” simply look in the mirror one day and say to themselves, My, this looks like a good day to self-radicalize.

Also regularly trotted out is the “homegrown-violent-extremists” moniker employed as recently as Thursday by FBI Director Robert Mueller III in Senate testimony.

Other “mainstream media” and government officials will keep blaming terrorism on Islam, as the Wall Street Journal does Friday in repeating the claim that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told the FBI earlier that he and his dead brother “were acting as jihadists motivated by Muslim religious anger at the U.S.” (In other words, pay no heed to what he scribbled on the side of the boat as he thought he was dying.)

Rarely has there been any official or quasi-official acknowledgement of the main problem. But there was a major exception in the fall of 2004 in an unclassified study published by the Pentagon-appointed U.S. Defense Science Board. Directly contradicting what President George W. Bush was saying at the time, the board stated:

“Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf States.”

That’s not spin. That’s the assessment of professionals who were reading the handwriting on the wall.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing ministry of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years and now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Has Ray forgotten the "sharp dressed man" alleged to have put Abdulmutallab aboard the Detroit plane without a passport? Ray's point about motive is vital, but the nagging suspicion, never satisfactorily explained away, that Abdulmutallab had "help" dilutes the purity of his alleged motivation. Indeed, it appears the vast majority of successfully thwarted terror plots since 9/11 arguably have been cases of entrapment. As near as I can tell Ray is arguing in the abstract when to make his argument he must concede the key disputed premise underlying the very problematic official narrative not only of the Abdulmutallab case, but of all the other terrror cases he might cite as well (up to and including the Boston bombing), i.e. that the malefactors truly acted "alone" without the encouragement, aid, and material support of some counterterrorist entity.

musings

Yes, we can do character analysis all we want. That doesn't change the fact that the ever-fascinating Shakespeare's Hamlet and Dickens's David Copperfield are fictional characters, the plots of whose lives are invented by two authors of actual genius. I would say the bombing is a grade B movie, hardly worthy of such long-winded analysis. Every ure plot device is hackneyed, including the message on the inside of the boat by a person who is now at a federal prison with a military psychiatric facility. I'm sure that when the time comes, he'll admit to the story which was introduced only recently and not at his discovery, as tickler for the audience.

If it hadn't been for the executives of 7/11 protesting that he did not rob their store nor was the picture of him from any of their facilities, the desperate desire for junk food and a wad of cash would have figured into the moments before he or his brother shot Sean Collier to get his gun, before car-jacking someone on Third Street in East Cambridge (what's the matter with that carjack victim – couldn't he find where he was supposed to be, or were the shut-down subways preventing him from going there?

I can only envy the really bad writers who have gotten millions for this tripe.

I couldn't agree with you more, john g. I would like to see the words "retribution and collateral damage" written on the side of a boat while I am bleeding in the dark.

musings

Yes, as though he has a college essay to finger paint in blood, with footnotes quoting Tim McVeigh. I wonder if he can still get extra credit for that?

The minute anyone subjects even a fragment of this B-movie Jekyll and Hyde to the slightest analysis, it just falls apart.

Why does it hold up at all? Because the public has become accustomed to suspending disbelief when watching its favorite tv shows, no matter how lame the plot devices. There is a complete duplication at every level of mass media when something like this comes down the poop chute, never a hesitation at accepting it. This is the debased currency they trade in, and they want us to accept the scrip they hand us —- or else.

ATM

Thank you Ray for injecting badly needed common sense into the conversation. The are two actions in this life that are so drastic that they absolutely must have a strong motives. One is suicide and the other is murder. Suicide terrorism demands two strong whys one for murder and the other for suicide. They do not like our freedom or they do not like our religion is ridiculous, it does not explain why in either case. A rich man who chooses to live in a cave in afganistan in no way is asking for freedom. Ray you have explained the terrorisms relationship to policy and that makes sense. What about the suicide bombing where does that come from? The 10000 vergines thing is just as ridicules as the they do not like us for our freedoms. Islam did not not have suicide bombing for 14000 years why now?

musings

Ray has taken leave of his senses. That's the problem. Of course it's wrong to hate Muslims, of course some of them might want to take revenge. That's obvious. But the framework for thinking this is the time they did? Did Ray ask himself why someone would use 10 dollar words while bleeding out? I don't think he's allowed to ask. Once CIA, always CIA. He's doing "God's" work here – when God is defined by the intelligence establishment. Poor guy. I actually pity him.

Bruce Richardson

Thanks Ray, well-informed articulation and alalysis as always. As a person with five tours in Afghanistan spanning 1986, 1987, 1990, 1991 and 1997. I could not agree more,…your analysis is spot on.

"When you attack one Muslim, you attach them all" It is this absorption of the individual into the collective – based on religion – that is the real Why. And it is Islam's leaders and scholars responsibility to declare the "perversion" by AQ et al. to be heresy, otherwise, they are condoning it and stating that it is a tenet of the religion. By cutting this cord, the popular support for these groups and the religious justification will be cut.
This article is close … But not close enough. If I declared "when you attack one fan, you attack them all" and then killed a Muslim or a Chechen or a Bostonian or a boxer or any other group these 2 murderers can be lumped in, no one would even pretend that I had a justifiable argument. They killed because of a particular school of thought within Islam which has never been disclaimed by Islamic leaders and religious scholars. That's the Why.

ATM

It is not to hard to get the same behavior out of Americanist. A few airplanes used as bombs and the next thing you know the intire US is saying "together we stand" and they are radicalized to the point that they will sacrifice Medicare social security a good standard of living etc to go on a never ending quest to rid the world of terrorism. Looks like OBL read the US fairly well. Yes US is in self destruct mode just took a catalyst.

Your reply is not responsive to my point about islam.
America and the rest of the world are focused on destroying AQ because AQ's stated purpose is to kill civilians (explicitly in the name of islam) but islam seems to have no such desire to destroy AQ. My point is that islam – if it wants to stick with the "AQ has perverted and corrupted islam" – needs o disclaim AQ and restore the uncorrupted and unperverted islam – which, one assumes, does not condone bombings at marathons and using airplanes as bombs.

john g

Islam is not some monolith you know. It's a religion. Islam can't do or say anything.

In my first reply, I said " And it is Islam's leaders and scholars responsibility to declare the "perversion" by AQ et al. to be heresy, otherwise, they are condoning it and stating that it is a tenet of the religion" So you have a point in that there is no singular head of Islam but there are respected leaders and scholars who should be speaking out and condensing AQ if they are going to continue to claim that AQ has "perverted and corrupted" Islam.

And I repeat: no recognized scholar or religious leader has stated to those 99.99% of Muslims that AQ teachings are heresy if they really think that AQ has prevented and corrupted Islam. Also AQ has in their writings and teachings effectively defined out if existence the concept of "non combatant" by saying that anyone who pays taxes is supporting those actions. Also AQ kills Muslims they unilaterally swung as not Muslim enough. So those 99.99% are left with these cute little catch phrases (all of which you have used) and also are left with no condemnation if these teachings
Who has said that the Boston murderers misinterpreted Islam? Or that they were wrong in using Islam as justifying their murders? No one

john g

Of course there has been condemnation in the muslim world. This line is just plain wrong.

Provide a link to condemnation of AQ teachings as heresy or an non-islamic.
Provide a link of a respected islamic scholar or religious leader stating without compromise that AQ teachings are a perversion and corruption of islam and therefore are heresy.

Take my word for it AQ goes to suadi and tries something they end up a bit shorter.
Terrorism = murder of inocents and is considered crime against humanity in Islam, a mortal sin, and penalty is death.

(WASHINGTON, DC – 9/11/2001) – The American Muslim Political Coordination Council (AMPCC), today condemned the apparent terrorist attacks in New York and Washington and offered condolences to the families of those who were killed or injured.

The AMPCC statement read in part:

"American Muslims utterly condemn what are apparently vicious and cowardly acts of terrorism against innocent civilians. We join with all Americans in calling for the swift apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators. No political cause could ever be assisted by such immoral acts."

They condemn the ACTS but not the TEACHINGS
Since you are incapable of supporting your own argument, I found THIS:
Fatwa On Terrorism – http://www.fatwaonterrorism.com/
I haven't read it (just the website) but it seems to say what I was asking about.
So NOW the question becomes: what is the status of this fatwa in the islamic world? I'll look that up for you.
And why didn't YOU know about it, if you are so adamant that islam condemns terrorism?

ATM

The pope will not condem catholosism as heresy just becase the Irish Republican Army claims it. Moslems do specificall condem the justifications that aq uses. You are mixing apples with oranges And because the things they do are criminal. AQ is a criminal organization and outlaw everywhere there is law. You should not try to make this a religous war religion is the sheepskin that the wolf wears.

I wasn't talking about the pope, so I won't let this discussion be diverted to the topic of how Catholics treat their heretics.
So back on point:
I found 1 website that condemns the justifications that AQ uses, and that particular document (from what I can tell) has gotten 0 traction in the islamic world. AQ is a crminal organization that itself uses religion (islam) to justify its crimes. Everyone who issues a statement says that AQ has "perverted and corrupted islam" but no one (besides the 1 document I found) has said that AQ teachings are heresy.
Also – look at the first line of my first post. That murderer brought religion into it. I am asking why that religion allows these murderers to use its name to justify their murders without calling them on it.
Again, I repeat: show me the statement from a respected islamic scholar or religious leader that says AQ teachings are heresy and non-islamic (which pretty much is the definition of "perverting and corrupting islam" one would think).
[see my next reply re your IRA statement]

I googled "catholic condemns irish republican army" and found a Time article from 1939:"The church sternly condemns all societies which plot against the church or state. They are guilty of crime against human society. Members of such secret societies incur excommunication."
and Pittsburgh Gazette article from 1987 that bishops stated that is is a "sin" to support the IRA and that "no right-thinking Catholic communicant could be associated with the IRA"
So it was pretty easy to find that.
But since the Boston murderer wasn't talking about Catholics, I won't. just wanted to show that it was pretty easy to find.

ATM

Will you bow to me and kiss my feet if I produce one. Or will you do yourself a blessing and find one yourself.

I bow to no man.
Besides, YOU raised the issue. It is your burden of proof.
Also – I FOUND one, but I also found that it has 0 traction in the islamic world.
Obviously, you have no response to my ORIGINAL posting except to repeat the verbal diarrhea that is always spewed whenever someone raises this topic. I conclude that you have nothing to say.
The conclusion is obvious: the teachings of AQ are NOT considered heretical to islam. That is a real problems for muslims. I would hope you see that but you don't.
Good luck with the rest of your life.

ATM

Infact it was you that was making unjust accusations. Those that make accusations have the burden of proof.

A – I posted THAT exact link in my reply 4 posts ago. And I have referenced it in EVERY post since then.
B – I have made NO accusations. I asked a question – you said there are thousands – and then you never provided any.
C – the fatwa you mentioned that I mentioned FIRST has received 0 support (from what I can tell) in the islamic world.
But, since you amuse me, let's keep playing.
Find a source that cites THIS fatwa in condemning AQ teachings.
Or – if you want – you can find a source that cites THIS fatwa in saying a specific terrorist or group (could be AQ, could be Ansar al-Sharia or any other such group) are teaching heresy.
NOT "their teachings are a perversion"
NOT "we condemn these violent acts"
A specific use of THIS fatwa to say the teachings are not islamic and therefore heresy.
Good luck.
P.S. I want to point out that not only did I find that fatwa 2 days ago (well before you), but that you posted 9 replies saying this before you found this 1 fatwa. One would expect that – if this is an accepted teaching of islam – it would be more readily retrievable. So you ARE actually proving the point that AQ teachings are not considered heresy in islam.

ATM

your answer is proof that you did not even bother to read my first link. fatwa was there. So you only read what pleases you.

It took you a week to read your own link and 6 days to respond to my posting of the fatwa? Good job.
Googling a term does not show support. Citing it in statements related to terrorist acts shows support. Citing that these terrorists are declared apostates as put forth by the Fatwa On Terrorism and therefore are not Muslims shows support.
Citing that the teachers of these murderers are teaching heresy, as the Fatwa On Terrorism sets forth, shows support.
Citing that no Muslim should listen to these teachers or attend these mosques, as they are apostates and heretics as set forth by the Fatwa On Terorism, shows support.
Still have not seen or heard those statements.
Still have not heard you say it
So you will reply to this post because its in your nature to have to have the last word. Go ahead. Post away. But be aware that anyone reading these posts between us sees that you have not responded, and have used a lot of words to say nothing.
It's just too bad that you and people like you spend more time arguing about nothing instead of speaking the truth: these terrorists are not Muslims. Why is that so hard to say?

ATM

Perhaps if you where reading my posts you would have noticed that I said that terrorism = murder of innocent and that is a crime against humanity , a mortal sin, and the penalty is death in Islam.

So whatever teachings lead to this are outside of Islam (herisy). Genreally terrorist do not claim to belong to special school. Most of the time they cloak themselves in a mainstream and try to behave like the image of piety , but this is trickery to confuse the ignorant and achieve there goals, evil people and Atheist have behaved in this way from the beginning of time.

So you agree that terrorists are not muslims.
So then why is there a discussion over killing them is a "war on islam"?
Why did you say "99.99% of muslims condemn islam" instead of "these murderers are not muslims"?
also – obl's fatwas are very rich in koranic and haddith citations.
and no one is issuing any statement that his proclamations are heresy.
these terrorists and murderers state without compromise that they are muslim,
You said "heresy" and "outside islam" – so state without compromise that AQ and its followers are not muslims.
THAT is how "young musims" are dissuaded from terrorism – by the knowledge that doing such deems them no longer muslim.
Right? If it's heresy and outside islam?

ATM

Another interesting point might be that the pope and most Christian churches condemned the war in Iraq2 Example http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/03/12/vatican-s… president bush's own pastor condemned it as an unjust war. An unjust war means that you will go agaiist god if you do it. The bottom line is that most wars and bloodshed in this world would be avoided if people actually listened to religious leaders. I am sure that there are some fools that went to Iraq thinking that god was on their side because a local ignorant pastor or priest said it was good. By the way the Ira was still in business 20 years after the pope issued his fatwa.

ATM

The worst thing that could happening is that people like you might help to convince a young mulsem to end his life in terrorism. You should think about what you are saying "support peace".

petronmb

Peter Falk of the UN has made essentially the same point (received with resounding jeers and hatred).. To mask global-domination policy all resistance must fall into the category "mad dogs who hate us" followed by "it's all a matter of national security." We need to look to the age-old question who benefits? from our global domination policy, as with the oil companies. But it's much simpler to demonize. More discussion and attention to the underlying dynamics of US Empire needed.

"Why"? The ultimate, but never ending, question. Most Americans cannot handle the truth, because it would force them to look hard at the policies, not to mention in the mirror, and see what we have become/wrought. It is easier to see in the glass darkly, rather than face to face – and to know in part, rather than know fully. Thus another answer to the "why" is precisely the same as the reason many Americans do not understand what is so very wrong with our policies – and that it is the same thing that triggers the awful "eye an eye" retaliation – we, and they, do not empathize. In a word, we (they) do not love our neighbor as ourselves. Until the vicious cycle is broken, all the world is going blind.

This kind of thing was starkly illuminated during a debate among Republican candidates for president in 2008, when Ron Paul had the temerity to suggest that certain foreigners hate America because America targets their homes, cities, families with the awesome destructive power of its military.

Rudolph Giuliani invited him to APOLOGIZE for making this remark, and received a wild ovation from the (South Carolina) audience for doing this.

Ron Paul (remember him?) is the first (and I fear, last) presidential candidate I have truly FAVORED in a long, long time.

Sorry Ray–America has not ever been attacked by terrorist or ordinary Muslems.
Self inflicted for a monatary purpose!

dink

Murder is murder. You had an angry older brother that was looking for some meaning. Chechens are as related to middle easterners as much as Ray McGovern is related to Australians. The connection was all made up in their head. If I punch a stranger in the face for any gripe I have, I can not point out an world injustice as my excuse. Antiwar people can not allow themselves to be scatterbrained. War is often state-institutionized injustice.

musings

I'm distressed that Ray McGovern is one of the fish reeled in from that boat. He's supposed to be a fisherman.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. In the Sixties he served as an infantry/intelligence officer and then became a CIA analyst for the next 27 years. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).